Yahoo Video and YouTube Scale Up in Social Media

Posted by Vaibhav

November 1, 2008

The social media industry got a tremendous boost from video communities as Yahoo Video and YouTube recorded a healthy growth in the video streams this September. Yahoo Video grew by a massive 56% to 265 million in September, compared to 169 million in August. This growth pushed it above Fox Interactive, which previously occupied the second spot after YouTube.It is to be noted that Fox Interactive here includes Photobucket, MySpaceTV, FOX Broadcasting, Fox Television Studios, Rotten Tomatoes, and IGN Entertainment Gaming Network.

YouTube, on the other hand achieved a big milestone as its monthly video streams crossed the astonishing five million mark with 5.3 billion streams, a growth of 12% over August. This made it maintain its lead in a comprehensive manner over others. However, other sites such as Fox Interactive Media, MSN/Windows Live and Nickelodeon registered a negative growth of 13%, 20% and 27% respectively from August to September this year, as per Nielson Online.

But the interesting point is how Yahoo Video managed to jump so high considering its position in the previous cases. It not only moved on to the second place, but also achieved maximum growth over others in September. In this context, a Yahoo spokesperson attributed the success to contextual placement of the videos and traffic as a result of major news events. Yahoo generated a record traffic for its popular services Yahoo News and Yahoo Finance in the month of September.

Meanwhile, Jimmy Pitaro, head of entertainment and sports at Yahoo! said that the company has blurred the lines between professional and user-generated content with videos such as the Shakira “Hips Don’t Lie” fan mash-up, which stood at the first spot on Yahoo for several months together. Moreover, he also described Yahoo’s live streaming, original content and on-demand offerings.

Considering the success factors of Yahoo Video, it seems that sites having videos relating to the economy and politics would be able to move up in the coming months. This means, more of the turbulent financial meltdown and global recession along with the Obama-McCain showdown related video content can prove to be ideal for a strong growth in October. It’ll be interesting to watch who emerges as the fittest in grabbing maximum number of eyeballs in the near future.

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